Gayle Wilson – The Cowboy's Secret Son (страница 4)

He put down the glass and turned to face the phone on the opposite wall. Make the call, get squared away with Shipley, and then grab a hot shower, he promised himself, imagining the heat relaxing muscles tensed by a long day in the air.

Maybe tensed even further by that little side trip into the past he took every time he flew over the Salvini place. Tensed every time he thought about Jillian. Which had been too often lately for his peace of mind. Especially since he’d come home.

Home, he thought, glancing around his mother’s kitchen. Not all that much had changed about it since she’d died. Just over twenty years ago, he realized with a small sense of disbelief.

There was a different color of paint on the walls. New curtains on the windows he’d been looking out. But the scarred wooden table and four chairs were exactly the same. He could still remember the night he’d brought Jillian here so they could tell his dad—

He stopped the playback of that image, closing his eyes against the painful strength of it. Too damn many memories. Too many ghosts. And none of them, except maybe his mother’s, would rest easy with him living here. He pushed away from the counter and walked over to the phone.

After he’d dialed Shipley’s number, he stood listening to the distant ringing, his eyes once more considering the chair where Jillian had sat that night. When he realized what he was doing, he turned around, facing the wall instead. And he knew that action was a physical enactment of what he needed to do mentally. To turn his back on the past.

He had been here long enough to know that coming home had been a mistake. It was time to start looking for another job. Time to move on. Time to forget about what had happened here and to get on with the rest of his life.

After all, he thought, the bitterness surging relentlessly to the surface again, that’s exactly what she had done. Jillian Salvini had turned her back on him and everything that had been between them. In doing that, she had been wiser than he. Apparently Jillian had known, even then, that no matter how badly you might want to, you could never really go home again.

* * *

“VIOLET,” Jillian Sullivan said. “Oh, God, not Violet.”

She touched the edge of her desk and, using it for support, eased down into her chair like someone who had suffered a hard blow to the midsection. Which was exactly what this felt like.

“I’m really sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” the man who had introduced himself as Dylan Garrett said.

Jillian forced herself to look up, taking a calming breath as she nodded. “I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea. I should have, I suppose. I had written her a couple of times and gotten no reply, which for Violet was so far from the norm…”

She shook her head, moving it slowly from side to side as she tried to assimilate the unwanted information that Violet Mitchum was dead. More unwanted than it would have been had they not had that silly argument the last time they’d met.

That was what those two letters had been about—an attempt to reassure Violet that she really did know what she was doing as far as marrying Jake Tyler was concerned. And as far as Drew was concerned as well, Jillian conceded.

That was what had eroded her confidence in her decision the most—Violet’s doubts about whether or not Jillian was doing the right thing for her son. The question of whether she was cheating him out of something that he was entitled to. And yet, one of the reasons she had agreed to marry Jake—

“Mrs. Sullivan?”

Dylan Garrett’s voice brought her back to the present, a present she was still having a hard time facing.

“I’m sorry,” she said blankly. “What did you say?”

“I was wondering if you had known Violet Mitchum long.”

Long enough to feel for her the kind of love usually reserved for family, Jillian thought. She didn’t say it aloud, but there was no doubt the old woman had assumed a parental role in her life. And therefore the loss was almost as devastating as if she had been one of Jillian’s parents.

Maybe even more so, she realized in regret. After she had left her family and ended up in Pinto, Jillian had desperately needed someone as supportive as Violet in her life. And through the years, she couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

“More than nine years. She was both a friend and a mentor.”

“A mentor?”

“She taught me a lot of what I know about this business,” Jillian said, glancing around the interior design studio. “When I came to Pinto, the only job I could get was in the local antique store. I learned a lot from the owner, who was a friend of Violet’s, but even more from Violet herself. Despite the rather…unusual appearance of her house, she had collected some really lovely things when she and Charlie traveled. Violet might not have had any formal education, but she had the eye, and the instinct, to discern quality and value.”

“And she shared those with you?”

Jillian smiled at him, thinking about all Violet had shared through the years. “That and far more. She paid for my classes in design and baby-sat my son so I could attend them. When I finished school, she helped secure this job for me by contacting a friend of hers who lived here in Fort Worth. I owe her more than I could possibly say, and now I discover that she’s gone, that she’s been dead for over a month. And I didn’t even know.”

Despite the depth of her grief, Jillian hated the catch in her voice when she spoke. Through the years she had learned the hard lesson of hiding her emotions. At first she had done it out of pride, and a determination that no matter what her father said to her, he would never see her cry. Then she had done it for Drew’s sake, keeping up a brave front for her son, despite the struggle those first years had been.

By now, guarding her feelings was a deeply ingrained habit. One that even a grief this profound apparently couldn’t break.

“I’m so sorry,” Dylan said again.

“Thank you. It’s just…such a shock.”

“And I have what will probably be another for you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Another shock. Not more bad news,” he clarified quickly. “Violet’s death was enough, I know.”

“What kind of shock?” Jillian asked carefully.

“Mrs. Mitchum remembered you in her will.”

Remembered you in her will. Which could mean almost anything. Violet had a lot of money, of course. Jillian had always known that. Not that it was evident in her person or in her treatment of others. It was simply that Violet loved to tell the story of her beloved Charlie’s strike. And considering how well-known Mitchum Oil was in Texas…

“She left me something?” Jillian asked.

“A couple of things, actually.”

Mementos then, Jillian thought, relieved. For the first time in years her financial situation was stable and promising, and much of that was due to Violet’s past generosity. She didn’t really want her to do more.

“What are they?”

“One I couldn’t bring with me,” Dylan Garrett said, smiling at her for the first time.

Again Jillian shook her head. “I’m not sure—”

“Violet left you her piano.”

Memories she had been fighting flooded Jillian’s brain. How many afternoons had she taken refuge in Violet’s huge Victorian house rather than go back to that dreary apartment over the antique store. It was all she could afford, and she was grateful for the owner’s generosity in making it available to her, but her loneliness for adult companionship had been almost unbearable.

At Violet’s, there had always been a welcome. Jillian remembered the long, happy evenings she’d spent there, her heart filling again with the warmth of the unconditional love she had felt emanating from the old woman for both her and her son. She would play the piano and Violet would hold Drew until he fell asleep. It had been idyllic. And a balm for the rejection Jillian had felt in every other aspect of her life.

“I can have it delivered whenever and wherever you want it.”

He meant the piano, Jillian realized. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she said softly.

“I’ll leave you my card, and you can think about it. Just give me a call when you’ve decided.”

“I used to play that piano for her.”

Even as she said it, Jillian realized this man couldn’t possibly care about that. Dylan Garrett was simply acting at the request of Violet’s lawyers. He had told her that at the beginning.

“She left me a horse,” he said.

Surprised, she looked up into his blue eyes, which were almost amused—maybe at Violet’s choice of mementos. And yet, at the same time, they exuded a sympathy that made Jillian feel as if perhaps he did understand what she was feeling.

“And she also left me one of these,” he added.

He laid something down on the desk in front of her. It took her a few seconds to break the strange connection that had grown between them to look down at whatever it was.

“My God,” she whispered when she did. And then she added truthfully, “I don’t want this.”

She didn’t. She would have given every penny this check represented to have had the opportunity to clear up the disagreement that had marred her last visit with Violet, the one where she had taken Jake Tyler with her.